Friday, October 10, 2008

IGOR is a kids animated film that subverts the Frankenstein legend. Igor is a humble hunchback who dreams of breaking through the class ceiling and becoming a bona fide Evil Scientist. To do this, he creates a monster that he'll enter in the annual Evil Science Fair (!) But Igor has three problems. First, his monster isn't an mass-murderer but an aspiring actress, who just wants to sing songs of joy and hope. Second, he's not actually that evil. In fact, he's a sweetie and he's falling for his monster. Third, evil Dr Schadenfreude wants to steal Igor's monster and win the science fair himself.

The movie is quite bizarre. I'm not sure how young kids are going to react to a movie populated with patchwork beasties rather than cute bunnies. Or a movie where the humour is aimed far more at adults than kids - knowing pop-culture references rather than prat-falls. And IGOR isn't even going for the sort of adult humour that drives a movie like SHREK. Rather, it's going for the sort of arrested development geeks (myself included) that love watching movies like BRAIN DEAD or YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or Tim Burton's animation. To that end, while I had a nice time watching IGOR I'm not sure if it really works as a kids flick. But if you like John Cusack and Steve Buscemi and loved the combination of ghouls and Harry Belafonte in BEETLEJUICE, this movie could be for you.

IGOR is currently on release in the USA, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, Greece and the UK. It opens in Iceland on October 31st. It opens in December in Russia, France and Portugal and in Argentina on January 1st.